


Shipwright

by jenni3penny



Category: NCIS
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-06
Updated: 2020-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:55:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23038951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jenni3penny/pseuds/jenni3penny
Summary: "Her name is a wooden ship // To try and force it into his glass bottle heart would only break her."Sabrina Benaim, 'Unrequited Love in Nine Parts'
Relationships: Jethro Gibbs/Jacqueline "Jack" Sloane
Comments: 18
Kudos: 104





	Shipwright

He's in love with her and he has been for ages, months, a year, maybe more. He knows that much, knows that it's been a long while of being fascinated by her smile, fixated on her hips, infatuated with her laugh.

He knows because when he first started to realize it - when he had first admitted it to himself - he had just proudly set the skeletal rails of another boat in his basement.

Now he can smooth his hands on and over her (both the woman and the half built boat) without having to ask permission.

The boat suffers neglect with more grace than she does, though. _Usually_.

Not that he often lets her alone long enough for neglect to become too much an issue between them. _Either of them_.

Still, there are some nights that he finds himself too wooed by the sawdust and wood stain scent and uninterrupted stillness of his basement, stalking the cutter frame like it's a prospective lover, bourbon in hand.

It's a fitting boat for her, he thinks. Agile and smooth, nimbly balanced, the best range of movement for choppy and challenging waters.

They've had the same name since he started hand bracing the hull planks.

***

"I think you love that boat more than you love me."

He thinks _maybe_ he loves the boat _near_ as much as he loves her but she surely loves him back in a wilder and more winsome way.

The boat gives him stillness, space, open water.

She's an unset anchor on the verge of tipping and mooring him down.

He's starting to understand that he's mostly fine with that idea. He's been listless (listing) for too long now anyhow. "Not possible."

He's had this conversation with at least two wives but she's been the first to say it with laughter in her throat, sincerity.

"You sure about that?"

He looks up and studies the way he can see the darker skin of her nipples through the too worn white of one of his old t-shirts.

Genuine affection thrives in the amber of her eyes as she cocks him a smile.

He's absolutely _positive_. "Yes, ma'am."

***

Still, some nights it's the boat and not her and most often for reasons that involve safeguarding her emotions.

Hell, for reasons that involve him being a vicious asshole and saving her from it.

Better she be jealous of the boat and the bourbon than find herself on the stinging end of his bad mood and piss poor attitude.

Those are the nights when the best of his work gets done. They become the hours he can spend channeling a combination of churning emotions and pent sexual frustration into something else that's beautiful and has her name. He can lose himself in the honesty of craftsmanship, refusing to acknowledge that age and arthritis are making the work take two times longer than it used to…

But if her father could fuck up a cabinet and still win her mother then he can spend an extra few months on the hull and hopefully tide over her (im)patience in other ways. Incidentally, he's pretty good with his hands.

He's supposedly aloof, though, pretends that he's not sure if their relationship will last long enough for her to christen the hull herself. It's safer to pretend she's temporary, it's easier on his heart and hands.

He somehow silently knows that he's gonna die having _Jacqueline_ be the last boat he names after a woman he's in love with, though.

Whether they're together or not.

***

" _Please_?" she pants it just below his ear as she presses down on his wrist and all of him tingles hot in response.

He finds that fitting her against the half hull and getting a hand into her panties is more often her idea than his. Not that it bothers him - though it does blissfully put him farther off schedule.

He's never wanted it to feel trite or cliche but she's never seemed to see it that way and any day that Jacqueline Sloane so succinctly sends his hand between her thighs is a day he decides to trust her judgment over his own.

She's smarter than he is most days, sharp. She sees the world as both a big picture and in small intricate parts and she moans in his basement as though the quietness was just waiting for her to come along. It's just the right low volume, the exact pitch. It's got the exact tone needed to meet the groan that he gives when he finds how wet she already is, how ready.

She's been waiting for him and he's been distracted and, _Thank Christ for the interruption._ He does some of his best work in the basement, always has, and especially when he's so stupid in love with the woman curling into his chest.

Her smaller stature is so evident when she bends forward, half shy, ducking her head down under his jaw as he braces her between himself and the unfinished boat. And he loves the small but scrappy shape of her, the hot silken softness of her hair as he digs into it, pulls her head back and kisses her.

It's not actually shyness, not with her, not entirely. It's affection, adoration, it's the preamble to the moan she leaves on his tongue. It's honesty and vulnerability and she's a woman who lives both of them side-by-side or, rather, shoved up against a boat.

"It's late," she speaks against his lips as he takes time out to breathe, refocusing his attention on his damp fingers as she catches against his shoulder. The pressure of his thumb on her clit is the exact thing that levers her higher against him, their mouths catching again.

She moans and she means " _It's late and I'm tired of waiting so get your ass upstairs._ "

He's learned to translate Sloane Speak, at least when it comes to her losing her patience and forcibly making herself the center of his attention. Not that it took much forcing when she was already half undressed.

"Cold?" he asks as she shivers, knowing the tremor has absolutely nothing to do with temperature, feeling the knowledge in his own grin. She presses harder to him in response, up on her toes and stretched, giving his right hand more room and his left hand more ground to cover.

"Freezing down here," she mumbles in answer, whimpering as she arches farther up his chest and links her arms at his shoulders. "Come upstairs."

Even in the half dim darkness of the basement she's haloed by a bare bulb's light and cradled by her namesake, smelling like dry sun and wood shavings. He could fall for her anywhere - it doesn't need to be anywhere impressive or expensive. She doesn't need makeup or jewelry or even those skirts that he loves her in.

She lets off a whine when he puts two fingers inside her and he chuckles when she near climbs the whole six feet of him. "Gonna make the boat jealous, Sloane."

"She understands."

God, she so often _does_.

***

She shakes her hair out of her face, sweat on her throat, and he has to flex his fingers into his sheets to distract himself. Her left hand rises to scoop her hair up off her neck, her other hand braced at the base of his throat. If he died from strangulation, naked with her on top of him, he wouldn't give a damn who found out. She can't help herself from grasping for him and he can endure most anything that keeps her reaching for him so desperately.

She's slapped his hands from her hips twice and while he's not the biggest fan of not being able to touch her… watching her is nearly worth it.

 _Nearly_.

So he leans forward, palms still pressed to his mattress while she slows the rhythmic roll of her hips. He ducks his jaw and rubs his nose against her cheek, expecting the weak but soft sound she makes.

He knows her, the sounds in her throat and the feeling of her clenching down around him. He knows that (outside of blatant honesty) showing her unfiltered affection, tenderness - it's always the best way to weaken her.

"Namin' the boat after you, anyhow."

"Yeah, _sure_ ," she grumbles, slinging both arms on his bare shoulders as she gives in to the warm press of each palm. She gives him a laugh that half catches in her throat as he just watches her. "You're serious?"

 _As a heart attack_.

***

Three hours later and he leaves her shipwrecked across his sheets, gorgeously mussed and naked and her hair so wildly washed across his pillow that he stops and watches her sleep on his way out the door. She's stretched out on her stomach and breathing slowly, rhythmically. 

She's the ship and siren at once, has been since their first hurricane. He's given up fighting and trying to steer clear of her.

Her shoulders are slack and relaxed, the curve of her breast still visible and her right arm up under the pillow she's appropriated. Gibbs tips his head, letting his glance slope down her ribs, one by one. Her hip is cocked up, her right leg up, bent, and his topsheet clinging to her.

He can see every scar that crosses her back and he exhales as he studies them. His fingertips can blindly find the deeper ridges and the more corded lines that rise beside them. He can count them in his sleep, map their dimensions without being consciously aware of it.

He immediately sees the compass rose that sits in the center of her back.

"I see you sneaking off," she mumbles quietly from under a mess of blonde, brown eyes deep and expressive as he looks up. Her voice is hazy deep and sexy as she digs the pillow deeper below her cheek and smiles. "Another woman, huh?"

"There _are_ no other women."

" _Smooth_ ," she answers as she stretches, drawing his eyes back down her as she kicks a foot out from under the gray sheet. Her ankle is thin, familiar, another body part he silently adores.

"Just the boat."

The sheet comes up her body as she rolls onto her back, lips curled in a smile as she stretches and groans. Her arms go up under her head and he feels his heart stutter at the sight of her sated and smug smile. "I knew she'd lure you back."

They're the same to him, the ship and the siren at once, both solid and sturdy and steadfast. He gives her a grin, the one he knows that she likes, the one that matches the wink and the impish shrug. "She's impossible to ignore."

She knows exactly who he's talking about, her nose scrunching up adorably just before she smiles and stretches, eyes shut and body taut. She knows who he means when he smiles just _that way_...

And it sure as hell isn't the boat.


End file.
